What is Love?

Sunday

"Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."


A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.


Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while loving someone deeply gives you courage.


Love does not dominate; it cultivates.


'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.


You will find as you look back upon your life,
that the moments
when you have truly lived,
are the moments
when you have done things
in the spirit of love.



I had often heard through music, poetry and Oprah, that 'love' was the answer.

I didn't get it.

Then when I was in my twenties, I met a stranger who 'showed' me...

She was beautiful, well dressed, forty-something and I would hear her as she came off of the hospital elevators by the click-clack of her high heels. Always one with a warm, broad smile, she would head straight into her husband's room where he lay, unable to speak, body contracted and immobile as a result of a devastating neuro-muscular disease.

She had insisted on bathing her husband daily. Afterwards she would read the newspaper to him and then a chapter of a book.

One day, while she was combing his hair, I asked her how long they had been married. She gushed as she reminisced about their love story and then she reached into her handbag and showed me pictures of their life together. He had been tall, athletically built and drop-dead handsome. The pictures showed a happy couple traveling and enjoying life.

It was clear to me that despite the ravages of his devastating disease, lying in his hospital bed was still and would always be, her handsome man.

That is love.

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Jen said...

Those are some great love quotes. Hope you had a great Valentine's Day.

Stopped by from SITS.